Judges 19-21

If you have your Bibles turn to Judges 19. If you do not have a Bible with you I encourage you to grab one of the red ones on the window sills at the end of each row.

In February of 2019, the Houston Chronicle released a news report that in the Southern Baptist Convention, our convention, there had been 700 victims of sexual abuse over the course of two decades within our churches. Worse than that, there had been awareness and continued refusal by the executive leadership of the convention to take preventative measures. Measures like keeping a list of those credibly accused and making them known to churches who were looking to hire these abusers. These reasonable measures were refused. And so, because of the refusal to do the right thing by the men who were supposed to be religious leaders, many of these abusers traveled to new churches and found new victims.

Upon the release of this news, the Southern Baptist Churches who were represented at the Southern Baptist Convention that year, overwhelmingly voted to begin enacting changes to combat sexual abuse. They also overwhelmingly voted to have an independent investigation into the executive leadership to see if the allegations made by the Houston Chronicle were true. Some members of the executive committee actively worked against those measures. Eventually, most of them were forced to resign their positions and the investigation was allowed to proceed.

In May of this year the report was released, and it was bad. This report detailed decades of evidence that the executive leadership covered up hundreds of cases of sexual abuse by Southern Baptist pastors. The report also showed that they actually did keep a private list of these abusers, but by refusing to make the list public, they did nothing to protect the vulnerable in new churches. Our leaders, instead of utilizing their positions of authority to protect the vulnerable, allowed abuse to continue unabated in order to protect the institution they found valuable.

So, what do we do when our spiritual leaders don’t protect the people they’re responsible for? When spiritual and sexual abuse runs rampant and the spiritual leader is either the perpetrator or they knowingly sit back and allow the perpetrator to continue their abuse? What do we do? How do we protect the vulnerable in our own church and stand up to bad leaders?

As we will read today, this is not a new fight. Those who are supposed to protect the vulnerable regularly, throughout the millennia, instead use them as resources that can help the leaders move further, but all too rarely as human beings made in the image of God who were created with inherent dignity and worth.

Let’s pray and let’s dig in.

Judges 19 is where we will be reading, but before we start reading I want to give everyone a warning: what we are about to read is likely the most horrific story of all the Bible. It’s a story about where our sin will take us if we continue to allow it to lead our decisions and desires instead of submitting to the instruction of God. If as we are reading this you find yourself repulsed at the details of this story, you’re supposed to. It is horrible what happens here.

Last week opened up the closing section of Judges by reading chapters 17-18. We read the story of Micah and his Levite priest and we saw all the ways that, left to our own sinful devices, we will pervert the worship of the LORD. We talked about some of the churches who produce a lot of worship music and yet are perverting the worship of God in their own churches. We were introduced to a statement filled with longing that summarizes the book of Judges quite well:

Judges 17:6 ESV

6 In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

That statement will arise more than once again before we reach the end of the book. It is the longing for a king who will rule with righteousness and keep such atrocities from happening in his kingdom.

With that in mind, let’s read Judges 19

Judges 19 (ESV)

1 In those days, when there was no king in Israel...

This is bizarre behavior that we really don’t have much of a correlation to in the Bible. The closest thing we have is in 1 Samuel 11 when Saul, the first king of Israel, cut up bulls and sent them throughout the nation with a threat to quickly gather the tribes for war. Perhaps we get more understanding into why the Levite cut up his concubine from an extrabiblical parallel. We seem to have such a parallel to Judges 19 found in the texts from the excavations at Mari (Tell Ḥarı̄rı̄). The text is a letter from Baḫhdi-Lim to a king, Zimri-Lim (ca. 1800–1775 BC).

For five full days I have waited for the Hanaeans but the people do not gather. The Hanaeans have arrived from the steppe and established themselves among the settlements. Once, twice, I have sent [word] to the settlements and the appeal has been made. But they have not gathered together, and for the third day they have not gathered.

Now, if I had my way, a prisoner in jail should be killed, his body dismembered, and transported to the area between the villages as far as Hudnim and Appan in order that the people would fear and gather quickly, and I could make an attempt in accordance with the command which my lord has given, to carry out the campaign quickly.